Substantiating Evolution?

Much of this section will deal with examples evolutionists give to substantiate evolution. Rebuttal to their claim will also be supplied. Most of these examples appear in text books, school and university, as supporting evolution. However, arguments against are never supplied and students are not taught rational thought – only propaganda with fraudulent data. Text books ought to carry the disclaimer : “Should the explanations and examples given in the text book be true, then evolution is true. “

Professor Hubert P. Yockey PhD is a physicist and information theorist. He worked under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan (atomic bomb) Project, and at the University of California, Berkeley. He has studied the application of information theory to problems in biology and published his conclusions in the Journal of Theoretical Biology from 1974 onwards. He is very critical of the primordial soup theory of the origin of life, and believes that "the origin of life is unsolvable as a scientific problem". “Research on the origin of life seems to be unique in that the conclusion [that life arose out of primordial soup] has already been authoritatively accepted. . . . What remains to be done is to find the scenarios which describe the detailed mechanisms and processes by which this happened. One must conclude that, contrary to the established wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on the earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written.”

What Yockey is saying is that evolutionists have already decided in faith that life was spawned from the primordial soup before establishing the existence of the soup nor the mechanisms and processes. This he says, is contrary to established wisdom – referring here to sound scientific method.

Naturalistic philosophy of science has created a predicament for science. No known laws of nature allow complex, living, information containing systems to develop from random unguided manner. Yet this is required if evolution were to be true. Creationists accept that life appeared as the work of an intelligent designer, not by accident.

Some scientists, including the incensed Richard Dawkins have suggested that life could have been “seeded” from elsewhere in the cosmos. This is of course outside the scope of science and pushes the question further back as to the cause of origins. As a very vocal “New Atheist”, Dawkins would rather posit aliens as the cause of intelligent life on earth rather than posit and intelligent designer as the cause.

Francis Bacon: “A little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him back.”

Information

DNA and other structures in living cells carry all the information for that cell to replicate, synthesize, assemble into tissues, organs and body parts. The information capacity of DNA is covered elsewhere in this book. At this point it is sufficient to point out that each cell has the information code, likened to computer code, to carry out those processes for life and propagation. Natural processes can also produce information, but very limited. These are matrix or crystal, amorphous, and strata. These are formed spontaneously without input from any intelligence, and examples are to be found everywhere.

In solids, the way the atoms or molecules arrange themselves contributes to the appearance and the properties of the materials. The forces responsible may be primary chemical bonds, as in metals and ionic solids. Or they may be secondary van der Waals’ forces of solids.

Irreducible complexity

The complex structure of the living cell was unknown in Darwin's day and at the time, ascribing life to "coincidences and natural conditions" was thought by evolutionists to be convincing enough. Darwin had proposed that the first cell could easily have formed "in some warm little pond." One of Darwin's supporters, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel, examined a mixture of mud removed from the sea bed under a microscope. He claimed that this was a non-living substance that turned to a living cell (Spontaneous Generation). This so-called "mud that comes to life," is an indication of just how simple life and cells were thought to be by the founders of the theory of evolution.

The technology of the twentieth century has delved into the smallest corners of living cells, and has revealed that the cell is the most complex system mankind has ever observed. Today we know that the cell contains power stations producing the energy. Machines manufacturing the enzymes and hormones essential for life. A databank for necessary information controlling all processes and products. Complex transportation systems for carrying raw materials and products from one place to another. Advanced laboratories and refineries for breaking down raw materials into their useable parts. Specialized cell membrane proteins to control the incoming and outgoing materials. And these constitute only a small part of this incredibly complex system.

One of the basic reasons why the theory of evolution cannot explain how the living cell came into existence is the concept of "irreducible complexity". A living cell maintains itself with co-operation of many organelles. If only one of these organelles fails to function, the cell cannot remain alive. The cell cannot wait for random mechanisms like natural selection or mutation to develop. Thus, the first cell on earth was necessarily a complete cell possessing all the required organelles and functions. If simple chemicals cannot develop information spontaneously then the living cell definitely had to have been created.

The mousetrap is used as an example of irreducible complexity. If any one the components: platform, spring, hammer, latch or catch were missing the mouse trap would not work. They would all have to evolve simultaneously together. One missing part would exclude the others from being selected in any mutation process.

A matter of chance

Mutations are rare in any given gene. Cells have an elaborate mechanism to correct mistakes in the code when they occur. When mutations do occur, they tend to be neutral, but some can be harmful. In evolutionary theory these mistakes are supposed to increase information, even though research experience has shown that in over 3000 fruit fly mutations not one produces a fly with a survival advantage. Mutations that are in fact beneficial have been shown to have a loss in DNA information. Natural section acts to preserve or eliminate traits that are beneficial or harmful. This would mean if evolution theory was correct, it would work only backwards.

If a positive mutation were to occur that made any appreciable difference to survival, it would be like having a needle in a haystack with no opportunity to produce offspring.

Chance - mathematically

Biologists typically took refuge in the idea of infinite time. Given enough time, they argued, anything can happen and the unlikely becomes likely, the improbable becomes inevitable. Biologists got away with this argument. The number of millennia invoked were so immense that no one was capable of conceptual­izing what that kind of time scale really meant.

But the computer revolution put an end to any chance theory of life's origin. Good science once again came to the rescue. Beginning in the 1960s, mathematicians cast their eyes on evolution itself. They simulated the trial and error processes of evolution over the equivalent of billions of years. The computers showed that the probability of evolution by chance processes is essentially zero, no matter how long the time scale.

“But,” says the advocate of chance, “someone has to the win the Lotto – right?” Or, “If there is a chance there is a chance.” This is to misunderstand “Chance.” To continue with the Lotto analogy, it would be closer to the situation if the background was more specified: “What are the chances that someone called John Smith (specified) won R10,000,000 (specified) on 14 August 2025 (specified)?” Zero. The probability of producing a single 150 amino acid functional protein by chance is about 1 in 10¹⁶⁴. To appreciate how big that number is, the whole known universe consists of 10⁸⁰ particles. 1 in 10¹⁶⁴ practically ZERO.

The subject of conditional probability is too large and complex to cover here. Besides, no professional scientist considers chance as a factor to consider into origins of life. It is recognised that the search must go elsewhere, and that something other than chance is at work.

DNA replication

Evolutionists, in promoting the theory, point out that cells have the ability to make and store multiple copies of DNA. If this, however, were the source of evolution, this DNA would only be duplicates and not new information. If it can be argued that this is a source of an increase in the amount of DNA in a cell that stimulates evolution, one would expect to find a general increase in the amount of DNA as one moves up the evolutionary tree. This is not the case, because even though mankind is more complex than bacteria and plants, there is in general less DNA.

A bacterium, Epulopiscium fishelsoni, has at least 25 times more DNA than mankind, with 85,000 copies of one of it’s genes. The common fern, as well as many other life forms also have more genes than mankind.

Darwin was wrong about the genetic tree of life. Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirts are lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that sea squirts should be placed with sea urchins, which aren’t chordates. “Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another,” Syvanen says, ”We’ve just annihilated the tree of life. It’s not a tree any more, it’s a different topology entirely, What would Darwin have made of that?”

Like Chimp, like Man

Most people have heard that the chimp and man have 99% common genetic material?

It is interesting that when evolutionary biologists discuss genetic comparisons between human and chimpanzee genomes, the fact that as much as 25 percent of the two genomes won’t align receives no mention. Instead, the focus is only on the portions of the genome that display a high-degree of similarity. This distorted emphasis makes the case for the evolutionary connection between humans and chimps seem more compelling than it may actually be.

In fact, only the genes that do match, match at 99%. These constituted only a very tiny fraction of the roughly 3 billion DNA base pairs that comprise our genetic blueprint. The use of percentages obscures the magnitude of the differences. For example, 1.23% of the differences are single base pair substitutions. This doesn't sound like much until you realize that it represents 35 million mutations! But that is only the beginning, because there are 40-45 million bases present in humans and missing from chimps, as well as about the same number present in chimps that is absent from man.

Some scientists are surprised at the anatomical, physical and behavioural differences between man and chimpanzee when they see so much apparent genetic similarity. With a philosophy that excludes a Creator God, they are forced to accept similarity as evidence of common ancestry. However, similarity can also be the result of a common Designer.

It is the differences that make the difference. The claim that we are apes is not a fact of nature, but an artefact of the way we organize and divide nature.